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Queenie’s Brigade

BY

Heather Massey

EXCERPT

Minutes—or was it hours?—later, Drake awoke to an onslaught of pain radiating throughout his body. He felt as though he had been turned inside out and rubbed across steel spikes. The hard cot upon which he lay only compounded his discomfort. But even that paled beside the return of his memories from the recent attack: First in brief flashes, then in steady pulses, and then finally in a crashing, furious wave. Relief flooded him that he wasn’t dead, but…. What the hell? They must have the ship by now. What’s happened to my crew? And why did they bother keeping me alive?

The questions faded, though, when Drake noticed something else—a presence nearby. A warmth. As he inhaled, a rich, almost too-sweet scent permeated his senses despite the odors of dirt and dried blood.

He cracked open one eyelid, followed by the other, and found himself facing a set of thighs beyond a barrier of pale green metal bars. Female thighs. Braced apart, their sensuous lines were bound in a pair of black leggings.

Drake had to know more. He groped and clawed his way into a sitting position. The sight tore away his breath. Standing outside his cell was some kind of feral goddess, an Amazonian warrior from the land of myths. She was tall, dark haired, and curved like a nymph. Black hair flowed wildly, a tumultuous river of glossy tresses extending down to her hips. These hips were crisscrossed with two gunbelts, fiercely accessorized. Her dark clothes stretched tightly everywhere except her torso, where they exposed a dangerous amount of ample breast.

Deep brown eyes regarded him brazenly, expression guarded. Yet her silent study of him betrayed a hint of curiosity. How long had she been standing there, watching him? Behind her, five swarthy men stood in a row. Though their clothing appeared mismatched and threadbare, each bore weapons ranging from daggers to rifles strapped to their limbs and backs. Their eyes promised death.

Despite the dour welcoming committee, perhaps now Drake would discover the answer to his questions. Perhaps he could leverage his life into some kind of hope for his crew, if they were still alive. Perhaps. But the sight of the stunning woman suddenly left him bereft of thought. He tried to shake this off, no doubt a result of the lingering exhaustion.

Simultaneously embarrassed and irate at such a piss-poor performance, he rose to full height. Ignoring the pain and his swollen left eye, he bore himself as he would aboard the bridge of his ship. He crossed his arms, displaying muscles sculpted from years of combat training. “I’m Captain Michael Drake of the UFE Relentless,” he said in his customary rumble. “Who are you?”

“I’m the woman who wants your ship’s codes,” the stranger said, her husky voice laced with threat. “And I’m the woman who’s going to get them. You don’t need to know more than that.”

Captain Michael Drake desperately needs an army to save Earth after a crushing defeat by alien invaders. When his damaged starship docks at a remote prison colony, he discovers Earth’s last best hope—an army to replace the one he lost.But, Queenie, the feral goddess ruling the prison, has other plans for the rugged star ship captain. After imprisoning Drake and seizing his ship, she prepares to lead her blood-thirsty band to freedom before the invaders track them down.Despite her intentions, Queenie secretly falls for the sexy, hotshot captain. Drake makes it plain he wants to win back Earth with her by his side. But is following her heart worth betraying her people?

Reader Alert!: Captain Michael Drake burns with desire upon seeing Queenie’s endless parade of tight-fitting outfits, even while he knows that claiming her will have to wait until he can convince her to join him in the fight against alien invaders.

To My Readers: Sometimes, heroes and heroines come from unexpected places—and they aren’t always what they seem. Within Queenie’s Brigade, you’ll discover high-octane action-adventure, a ragtag band of underdogs, and a take-no-prisoners romance between a noble starship captain and the wildcat woman he falls for.

Queenie’s Brigade

Posted by Marlene Harris

Rooting for the underdog can make for a fantastic story. When it’s the last space ship left to lead the Rebellion, it’s the stuff of great space opera. Throw in a forgotten prison colony and enough sexual tension to power the ship by itself, and you’ve got that best of all possible universes–science fiction romance. Queenie’s Brigade by Heather Massey is just that, a terrific science fiction romance. Something there just isn’t enough of these days.

Michael Drake is the captain of the UFE Relentless. And his ship is that last survivor. Being the captain, he knows in his bones that duty must come first. And his duty is not to go down with his ship. His ship is equipped with technology that was “adopted” from a captured enemy vessel. Drake’s duty is to take his ship and crew out of certain death and equip other ships with the new tech, then come back and kick the Calithian Empire’s ass out of Earth space.

But the hyperspace jump that took Relentless out of the battle did not put her into friendly space. Or even neutral space. That hybrid tech was not precisely reliable. Or totally aimable. Relentless and her crew found themselves at the equivalent of the ass end of nowhere, orbiting the worst penal planet in Earth’s jurisdiction, desperately in need of repairs and out of options.

Only one problem. The penal planet had been taken over. The inmates were running the jail. The most hardened criminals that Earth needed to incarcerate. And those convicts outnumbered the crew of the Relentless. Something Captain Michael Drake was all too aware of–after the new “overseers” of Hades Station had him and his crew firmly in their clutches.

Drake had hoped to use the convicts as military manpower to help drive back Earth’s invaders. After seeing them in action, he was even more impressed with their potential, even though it was turned against him and his crew. But their leader, Queenie, truly captivated him–in every possible way.

Escape Rating A: I read this in one sitting. When I picked it up to write the review, I got sucked into it again. It’s that good.

The beginning of the story is from Drake’s point of view, but after that, it alternates between Drake and Queenie. Queenie is a fascinating character, having been raised to be “tough as nails” in order to become the leader of the prison gangs, but not ever being allowed to lower her guard with anyone. Drake is the first person who treats her as an equal.

There have been a lot of comparisons between Queenie’s Brigade and the book/movie The Dirty Dozen, because of the whole “recruit convicts to become soldiers” aspect. Since the Dirty Dozen already were soldiers, after all, they were in the military stockade when they were recruited for that specific mission, I didn’t see that link so much as a couple of other things.

One that caught my attention was the issue of the hereditary penal colony. Drake assumes Queenie must have been convicted of some crime, and is shocked to discover that she was born on Hades. Earth has successfully buried the secret that a sentence to Hades is forever. It reminded me of Heinlein’s Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Or the warrior women in Kate Douglass’ DemonSlayer (Demonfire, Hellfire, Starfire) series, where the Atlantean society has forgotten that warrior women even existed, let alone that they were imprisoned, and that their daughters are still imprisoned.

Then there’s the relationship between Queenie and Drake that eventually leads to romance. At first, it’s a struggle for the two leaders to find a way for their groups to work together. They need to each maintain leadership of their own crew, and Queenie has to be seen as in control, or she will lose control of the prison gangs that run Hades. But they have to find a way to eventually meld the groups, or they’ll never get off Hades! Queenie and Drake made me think of Janeway and Chakotay on Star Trek Voyager, except that the roles were reversed, and Heather Massey did right by them. Thanks Heather!